Ok I seriously don't know what I was thinking when I told Ella, "sure you can have a sleepover for your birthday party." No correction, I know what I was thinking, I was thinking, "sweet! this will be easy! a few friends come over we eat pizza and cake, the girls watch a movie and they go home or go to sleep. Awesome! Only work on my part will be cleanup and surely Jamie will do that." I was thinking "easy peasy!" Oh how I can deceive myself. The party is tonight! I still need to finish cleaning, go pick up a movie from Redbox, and find some more cake decorations for the girls to use to decorate their individual cakes. Not to mention the fact that I'm so sleepy because I stayed up late last night to make these:

Yep, handmade purses for each girl. Inside is a yummy lip gloss, sparkly fingernail polish, pink fingernail polish, and little bead kit I put together to make a beaded ring. I sewed each purse, and added some sweet polka dot ribbon. Both the canvas fabric and ribbon I had left over from a bag I made for Ruthie last year to carry her ballet stuff in. The letters I diecut out of some felt I found at Hancock fabric and bought for a different project that has long been forgotten. I had to do a little stitching with white embroidery floss on each letter because otherwise they looked quite sad. All in all they went rather quick and were easy if only I hadn't started them at 10:30 pm the night before the party.Oh well I hope the girls like them.

As for the birthday cake, Ella really wanted me to make a Train Cake for 2 reasons. 1.) This has become a tradition. Sometime between Christmas and Ella's birthday we always make this cake and decorate it like a cool candy train. Some years have been quite elaborate and some we just dust it with powdered sugar and read the Polar Express. And with our Atlanta trip after Christmas and Ella going back to school as soon as we got back, we just haven't had time to do this yet. 2.) She loves to go crazy with candy as do her friends that will be joining us. So what do I do? I agree to make this. The cake is easy to make and is in fact already done and waiting to be adorned with yummies. However, I always forget how hard it is to find good candy in early January! UGH! So now I must run and hunt out the many options to use tonight. Wait! I just realized I'm going to have 5 eight year olds here tonight and I'm arming them with loads of candy and other sugar! I really need to think things through better.